Fire Investigation dog sniffs out deliberate fire

Firefighters from Bridlington Fire Station and Humberside Police were called to attend a fire yesterday morning which had broken-out in the changing rooms at Beeford Cricket Club. The fire, which had started during the night, had burnt out by the time fire crews arrived at around 08:30 am.

The attending Fire Investigation Officer Paul Hayden carried out an initial inspection of the scene, then requested the assistance of the newly trained fire investigation (FI) dog, Etta.

Paul said: “There was an unusual burn pattern which lead me to believe the fire had been started deliberately so I called for the FI dog to attend. Etta put her training to good use and quickly detected an accelerant had been used to start the fire, confirming my initial judgement.”

The FI dogs are used in cold, post-fire scenes to search through the debris for any remaining traces of ignitable liquids that could have been used to start a fire deliberately such as, petrol or cigarette lighter fuel.

They provide a valuable role when carrying out fire investigations as with a dog’s superior sense of smell being many times more sensitive than that of a humans, they can indicate a detection in minutes, enabling more accurate samples to be sent off for analysis.

The fire had caused heat and smoke damage to the building. No one was injured during the incident.

“The fire investigation is now complete and, with the assistance of the FI dog, I have confirmed it was started deliberately,” Paul added.

A spokesperson from Humberside Police said: “The cause of the fire has found to be deliberate and we are now investigating the incident. The use of the FI dog in this incident has been of great use to the initial fire investigation and we will now be trying to establish who committed this crime.”

“Anyone who knows anything about this incident is asked to contact the police on the non-emergency number 101, quoting log 89 of 23 March 2015.”